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Interview: Kelly Reichardt on Wendy and Lucy

She spoke with Slant about Wendy and Lucy and its political bearings, and what success means for an ultra low-budget filmmaker.

Interview: Kelly Reichardt on Wendy and Lucy
Photo: Oscilloscope

Kelly Reichardt teaches film classes at Bard College, but she should also teach economics. Her latest film, Wendy and Lucy, is a devastating thesis on the reality of going dead broke in today’s America, of watching helplessly as every rung on the social ladder snaps in your fist and you begin to plummet toward homelessness and hunger. Michelle Williams, with face scrubbed and hair blackened, plays Wendy, an Alaska-bound drifter who logs each dollar she spends in a little notebook, constantly drawing attention to a finite sum that separates her from beggary and forcing her into indecent deliberations over whether or not to feed her only companion, her dog Lucy. Together, Wendy and Lucy form an almost Eisensteinian pair whose private struggle is society’s shame. Reichardt recently invited Slant down to Manhattan’s Oscilloscope Labs to talk about the film and its political bearings, as well as to debate what success means for an ultra low-budget filmmaker.

Old Joy was very much about the harsh realities people confront in their mid-to-late 30s. What made you want to choose a mid-to-late 20s protagonist for this story?

’Cause that’s the age Michelle was. [laughs]

Good answer.

You know, she could have been older, though it does seem to be in your mid-20s that people get that idea to go work in the cannery, go to Alaska. Everyone I’ve met who has done it seems to have done it around that time. By your 30s you know you don’t have what it takes to work in the fish canneries.

Maybe I’m sheltered, but that goal of “going north to work at the canneries” seemed a bit extreme to me, a Christopher McCandless kind of thing. Did you see Wendy as an extreme personality?

No, I didn’t. I saw her as being a practical personality, but maybe extreme coming from where she comes from, Indiana. I’ve met people when driving across the country by myself and I’d talk to a woman here and there who was working at some kind of food place and they sometimes can’t tell you about the next town, much less about the next state. You just realize that it’s not in some people’s scope to travel far, so I think that’s maybe “other” than her, but if you spend time in Oregon you meet tons of people who’ve spent time in Alaska at the canneries. It’s a pretty common place to go to get started, because you can live there. You get your housing, you get your expenses paid, you’re just working all the time so the idea is that you can get a little nest egg. If this was outside the computer age, she wouldn’t know about that option being from Indiana, but I thought she could have come upon it.

Had she drifted down to North Carolina, where I grew up, her interactions with people would have been less impersonal. Someone would have scooped her up and taken her home for breakfast.

She should have gone south! That’s true, that would have been a smart thing. Though not all the South is like that. Some parts of the South when I’m driving through you feel like a real outsider, it’s not as welcoming. Yeah, but North Carolina is like a big blanket. I think of them each as different, in their own orbit that she goes through. But it’s also why we didn’t really want it to be Portland per se. We wanted it to be Oregon but not Portland, because in Portland she probably would have run into a group of kids who would’ve helped her.

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My knowledge of the Pacific Northwest is very fuzzy. Serial killers and grunge music.

Yeah, it’s so funny, where Kurt Cobain is from, you drive into the city and it says “Come As You Are” as, like, the city sign. Like, a really generic city sign. It’s the most government-looking thing and you’re like, what? But wow, what a cold, lonely place. I drove around there when I was scouting Wendy and Lucy and it’s not the South, certainly.

There’s a moment in the film where Wendy passes by a building and I think I saw the word “goner” written on a wall—did you put that there?

No, I’m not that literal. But I used it, so I guess it doesn’t matter if I put it there or not. It was there. After we shot like 18 days with a crew, I made a couple of trips back with Michelle and we just went around to all the locations we had been to and did some pickup shots and re-shot some stuff and the graffiti that had originally been there, which I think shows up earlier in the movie, was gone and “goner” was there. But I’ve since come to find out that that’s a record label. I’ve seen that same graffiti in other places.

By the way, having re-watched Old Joy again recently, are we meant to believe that we’re watching the continuing adventures of Lucy, as she goes from place to place?

No, she’s my dog and so I have her with me. It’s written in because I’m always traveling with her.

You’re a dog person, I take it?

No, not really, I just got hung up on this one dog that I found, but I wasn’t intending to get a dog. I never saw myself as a dog person.

Dogs in movies are always so symbolically loaded. I’m assuming Umberto D. was a big influence on Wendy and Lucy. What else?

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A lot of Italian neorealism. We came up with an outline for the story before Jon went off to write the story, before there was a script. We kept saying “This reminds us of something…” and Jon goes “Yeah, it’s Italian neorealism.” And then we started going back and watching some films and “Of course, it’s Umberto D.!” So, sure, that film is a masterpiece. What can you say about that movie? It’s true, Italian neorealism and a lot of the new German cinema that came out. Then the ’60s, the angry young man films from England, the schools of film where the protagonists are the outsiders, the nonromantic people in society and the question of what their worth is is constantly raised throughout the films. Do you have value if you’re of a certain age or income? They also sort of touch on themes like, are we connected? How much should we be helping each other out? Those kinds of questions. Those were all influences, but the main influence was just living in America and watching the divide between the rich and the poor grow so huge. It’s hard to miss.

Wendy and Lucy also reminded me of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu a little. Did you see that?

No, what’s that?

A Romanian film from a couple of years ago about an old man who has a medical crisis and goes on a Stygian, late-night ambulance ride from hospital to hospital, but no one will admit him.

No, no. That sounds pretty great.

Do you think America has a rich tradition of films with economic engines?

Well, I’m pretty guilty of not seeing a lot of the new American films. I’m pretty bad, I’ve gotta say. I tend to look elsewhere. Why, I don’t know. There are times in America where I look at American films—the ’40s, and I love the ’70s and the ’30s. There are certainly many films from the ’60s, but not all the campy stuff. I don’t get too into that. Unless I’m on a plane, then I catch up with Hollywood on a really small screen, which is unfair. There are a lot of new, exciting [films]. A lot of the Iranian films. If you go to the festivals you can see films coming from other places.

I don’t know if you view your own work through a political filter, but you do allow these little bursts of overt progressivism to punch through, like the Air America snippets in Old Joy and the Karl Rove Jr. kid in Wendy and Lucy.

I’m interested in making personal films and to me every film is political. There’s political in the personal. A lot of it has to do with Jon Raymond, my writing partner. I got turned on to him through Todd Haynes, who has produced these films. I read his novel and he has this way of writing where you’re reading about friendship and then it only occurs to you afterward that this is about everything. It’s about right now, this period of time, this moment. It has this ripple effect and it has a lot of room for you, as you’re reading, to bring your own life experience, your own point of view to it. So with Wendy and Lucy we start out with this idea that the film’s going to be about economics, about this time in America, but then that has to hopefully go away and it becomes about this girl Wendy, about these characters, and we never really focus on it again. I focus on it when I’m picking a place to shoot. Those decisions add texture to the themes, but certainly Michelle and I never had a conversation about the politics of whatever. It was all about Wendy and what would Wendy do, and hopefully all of that stuff gets pushed away. It either transcends or it doesn’t.

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What’s an ideal political film for you?

For me, an ideal political film would be a film like Shampoo or McCabe and Mrs. Miller. For me, those are very character-driven films.

You’ve talked before about wanting to continue working at these sensationally low-budget levels. Isn’t that something filmmakers tend to say and then disregard once they meet with a certain level of success?

Well, what’s your definition of success? I find that to be a fucking annoying question, I have to say.

Why is that?

This constant implication that success has one picture is so limited—and talk about American! I’m constantly asked this, as if teaching is some loser profession, or an uninteresting place to be. I’ve been out in L.A. for five days with my film, just doing stuff that I’ve never done before, press junkets and stuff, and I’m like—this is it? This is what everybody thinks is the most special fucking thing on the planet? Are you kidding me? It melts your brain. It’s really hard to stay small, actually. That I’ve been able to make these last two films without anybody paying any fucking attention and just go off and have complete artistic freedom—what are you gonna trade that for? What do you consider success, since you’re asking me that question?

I think I was just suggesting that if you were to raise more, you’d probably spend it wisely. There’s no discernable difference between the scale of your films and a Woody Allen film, but he can spend 20 million and the money buys access to more filmmaking tools and sought-after actors and so forth.

Give me an example of a woman who can do that.

A woman who can insist on creative control and still raise 20 million?

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Yes.

I can’t name any, but I have a reason why I can’t.

I have a reason too—there aren’t any! Okay, forget about 20 million. Name a woman at the level of Gus Van Sant or Todd Haynes. Give me a female example of that.

Allison Anders. In 1996. I can’t think of any on the spot, but in that category I know there are some.

And she wasn’t getting 20 million, by the way. She was living off a grant. Please. The idea that we’re struggling to think of one that might have existed at some point—maybe that’s why that question pisses me off. I’ll also say that I can’t think of a woman who has this benefit either: Lars von Trier and Terrence Malick can put out films and not have to go out and talk about them. If I want to think about what real success would be, it would be to be able to make a film without anyone breathing down my back and then not have to go out and talk about the film after you’ve gone to great lengths in your film to not over-explain everything. To not have to go out, that would be true success, but then you’re just screwing over your distributor or your investors.

If you feel that strongly, wouldn’t they have settled for just having Michelle go do a few rounds?

Michelle’s not going to spend a year of her life. I mean, she’s doing what she can do. But who wants to do it? No one wants to do it, to be honest. But on success, I really would like to know—I get asked that question all the time. What is it that you’re asking about?

I guess I’m talking about making the most of a rare career option. The barriers to entry and odds of getting to work at a high professional standard are longer for the aspiring filmmaker than the aspiring teacher, right?

I’ll just say this. I spend five days of my week traveling around with my film, talking about my movie, and then I spend two days a week going up to Bard and interacting with…I guess it depends where you teach. I’ve had crappy teaching jobs that I’ve not enjoyed, but I’m teaching with Peter Hutton and Peggy Ahwesh, filmmakers that I really admire and who make their films very outside the system, because it’s an avant garde program. It’s more academic, it’s grant-oriented, and to just go up and teach and be pulled out of yourself and not have it be about yourself for two days and be able to interact on other people’s ideas, it’s by far the best two days of my week. When I’m getting in my car and I’m driving up to Bard I’m just so relieved.

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What are the good parts of making movies?

When I’m scouting for a film, just driving around the country scouting for the movie and I’m working with my writing partner or my producers who I love and who are my dear friends or talking to Michelle about what a character is or whatever—those are all super, super rich experiences and I’m very fortunate that I’ve had them. My best filmmaking experience, as far as an experience, has definitely been this film I made, Ode, which is like a 50-minute Super 8 film that I shot and my friend recorded sound on. It was a two-person crew and two actors and we were outside all day and it was super-challenging, there was nobody watching us and it was done completely privately. That’s where Old Joy came from, the idea of going off with a group of friends into the forest and making an art project; it was never seen that it was going to be a feature film when we were shooting it. Those are the rich parts, but what comes with all the rest of it falls into that definition of “success.”

And on keeping it small, have you ever been on a movie set? They’re the most macho environments you could ever hope to come across. It’s very different if things are small enough that if I want to move the camera an inch I just move the camera an inch. On a set you tell someone “I’d like to move the camera an inch” and it’s like [hand to mouth] “We’re moving the camera!” and it’s this whole moment-killing thing with everyone running with this shit all over them, the walkie-talkies and the Blackberries and all this stuff. I am really easily distracted. I’m not creative with that much noise around me, so I would say that I’m lucky that my ideas are so small and that it kind of works, aesthetically, for the stories we’re telling and the amount of money we’ve had. And believe me, no one is banging on my door with a ton of money.

Not yet, but you’ve got real chops. At some point, a budget of a hundred grand or so might create barriers to your artistic exploration. What I’m talking about is, like, the joy of dolly shots. I don’t buy that you’re uninterested in exploring that.

I made a first feature and then after that I spent four years not getting a film made—living “the dream” in L.A. to get a feature made. It was by far the least satisfying time of my life. Then I came home and made the Super 8 movie and felt in control. I had this great epiphany when I was standing in a field with friends making an art project. It was like, how do I structure my world around this? This is satisfying. This is the pinnacle. That’s why I started teaching, I just said to myself, how can I sustain something like this, where I have some money to make some films? And it is nice to be able to shoot on 16 and it’s beautiful to shoot on Super 16 and have it be blown up, but to me the key is that I personally don’t have a personality with the flexibility to make that system that does exist work for me.

It does take money to make films. I’d like to have a million dollars to make my next project. I can do it for 1.4 million. It’s a period piece and I can’t do it for 30 thousand. Jon Raymond’s novel, The Half-Life, I would love to make into a film someday and it could not be done on a super-low budget. It’s just about feeling that you don’t have so much weight on your shoulders. You can take some risks and fail and you’d only be taking a few of your friends with you. The thing that I want is to not have to go through development, to not have to deal with agents, to not have to deal with lawyers, to not have to show anybody my script, to not have to read script notes when I really don’t want them, to not have anyone look at a cut of my film and then give notes when I really don’t want them. And by the way, the thing about technical chops, figuring out how to make films all came between the 10 years between my two features and you figure it out through teaching.

You teach yourself filmmaking academically?

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Yes! I aim my classes to what I’m most interested in and where my questions lie and you deconstruct the narrative in a room full of people and every time it reveals more and more and more. I never went to film school, I never studied any of that stuff. I’m a high-school dropout.

When times were rough, did you ever experience Wendy-levels of poverty?

I’ve been really broke.

Hungry?

Never hungry. I did live in New York for five years without an apartment, but I always ate. I’ve been as broke as Wendy, but I’ve always had more of a network of friends who were really generous to me. And talking about success, you know I’ve had some of my favorite filmmakers help me get my films made. I feel like I’ve been very fortunate. And I had my eye on Bard College for a long time. I wanted to teach there for a long time and it’s really special for me to be there. Teaching has taught me a lot, it’s put me around people who are smarter than me. It’s turned me on to things to read that I wouldn’t know to read. The students come in and they’ve traveled all over the world and they’ve read everything and they turn me on to stuff I just never caught on to. I didn’t go those routes.

So, I don’t know. If you could make films and then put them out and not have to reveal anything about yourself, that would be, for me, total dream success. When we were doing our little press junket for Wendy and Lucy, which was completely new to me, I was thinking how can I make it so that I never do this again? Sitting in a hotel room all day long. Talking about yourself over and over again, all day long. Telling the same stories, all day long. It’s not my dream. I don’t like getting dressed up. I don’t like getting my picture taken. I don’t want to talk about myself. I like my privacy.

Ryan Stewart

Ryan Stewart's writing has appeared in MovieMaker, Premiere, and Cinematical.

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